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Budget Reflections

This Budget felt very different.

Usually we spend the speech neither listening to what the government is sayingnor to the doom laden responses of the loyal opposition, but next day we rush to thepapers to look at the tables of comparison that tell us how muchbetter or worse off we might be if we are pensioners, borrowers, savers, parents,

smoke, drink or drive a car. All the technical stuff about government borrowing and national indebtedness, passus by, as most of us live in the present rather than the longer term .

I asked a friend how he felt after Wednesday's Budget. His answer: ' Oh a bitbetter off, because I can save more in ISAs' . He also liked the extensionof the stamp duty exemption on properties at the lower end of the market as youngstersin his family are trying to get on the housing ladder. So he wasresponding as you would expect, but then he said 'But I'm really concernedabout all this government borrowing because the payback, when it comes,

will affect everyone in my family, and their friends, as well as me, foryears and years to come.'

I wonder how many of us feel the same. This Budget is like an icebergwith a red flag on top. The red flag, taxing the rich at 50%, was adistraction; the immediate changes to savings and house purchase and thelike, are the 10% of the iceberg above the water clear for all to see. But when you look atthe great mass, the 90% that's below the water line things really dolook very worrying and the water looks very murky.

Buried deep, down there in all the detail, along with thedevil, comes something I spotted which will affect a lot of people in my part of thecountry in East Anglia: the decision to scrap tax breaks andconcessions, that were introduced to encourage investment in self cateringholiday cottages and boost the tourism industry, after April 2011. Manypeople will sell up and tourism, a cornerstone of many local economies and the UK economy,will suffer at a time when it was thought that the the home grown holidaytrade would benefit as people stayed in the UK. Just one tiny detail from the depts.

So what else is lurking there as yet unnoticed by the majority of people, I wonder.

My friend's last comment was also pointed : ' Who on earth would be madenough to get themselves elected, when they have to sort all this lot out? Who indeed!!'